Final Fantasy XIII-2 review

After almost a quarter of a century of producing genre-defining
Japanese role-playing games, it's difficult to accept. But I'm
deeply concerned that the creators of Final Fantasy have
forgotten what the components of a great Final Fantasy game are -- or
have at least forgotten how to assemble them correctly.

The latest title in the series is Final Fantasy XIII-2.
It's a direct sequel to 2010's Final Fantasy XIII, and one with which Square Enix
producer Yoshinori Kitase recently told me had the goal of
rectifying "every single negative view" fans had about its
predecessor.

Kitase has certainly scored that goal by producing a
finely-polished game with a unique approach to storytelling in the
form of time travel, and being able to alter the future -- and past
-- of the game's world. But in the process of righting previous
wrongs, a whole other set of questions are raised, and I fear that
like Final Fantasy XIII it'll be another game that the
average fantasy gamer will enjoy, but long-time Final
Fantasy fans (such as myself) will write off as lacking the
soul of a classic Square Enix RPG.

Story and characters
You awake in a colourful hut on a sun-kissed beach. The sky beams
blue and children are running happily through the sands, playing
with cats and enjoying a life unthreatened by events of the past.
It's been three years since the conclusion of FF XIII, and
the evolved world of Pulse is content in its existence. But
Lightning, the previous game's protagonist, along with most of her
companions are missing, presumed dead. Her sister Serah, FF
XIII-2's cute and level-headed lead, has a memory that
suggests otherwise -- but it's an ominous memory, and suspiciously
one that differs from that of everyone else in her world.

When a mysterious 18-year-old called Noel suddenly appears,
claiming to be from far in the future and with knowledge of where
Lightning is, he convinces Serah to investigate the other oddity
that has suddenly appeared on Pulse: a gate that allows the two of
them to traverse the flow of time and space itself. Thus begins an
adventure to not only find Lightning, but save the world from its
an ultimate destruction foretold to take place far in the future --
a destruction only Noel and Serah can help prevent.

Times and locationsFF XIII was criticised for its ultra-linear storyline,
which offered practically no room for exploring different paths
through its primary narrative. The ability to travel through time
and space in its sequel is one of the first ways players will
experience Kitase's attempts to address one of the aforementioned
"negative views". Over the course of the game players can use a
menu system called the Historia Crux to revisit times and places
they've previously been. It's an effective approach to delivering a
non-linear story, as it doesn't seem possible to visit every
possible location on a single playthrough, so your choices as to
which times and places to visit affects the game's progression.

The problem is that you'll visit the same geographic location
multiple times, but simply at different time periods. Upon one
visit you might experience a town as a thriving, colourful locale
full of life and character. But later it may be a desolate
wasteland. It's effective in highlighting how the world is evolving
over time, but it has the negative effect of making the game's
world seem unreasonably small. With only a handful of visitable
locations, simply changing the people, objects and enemies
discoverable in each doesn't give the player a feeling of variety
as much as the game probably should. Arguably you'll visit far more
locations in FF XIII, but have no choice over which and
when; in FF XIII-2 you get fewer places to visit but are
free to discover them as you please. It's up to you whether that's
a good thing or not.

Despite the small number of locations overall in the game, there
are some that stand out. The city of Academia for example is a
futuristic city of gargantuan proportions, glittering with
Tokyo-esque neon signage, flying cars and mile-high buildings
connected by floating bridges. It's like a modern day Esthar City
from Final Fantasy VIII, and its inhabitants (depending on
the time period you visit) give the city a sense of being truly
alive. Inhabitants of this and other locations can be talked to,
offering nuggets of backstory of their home and some will offer you
various quests. Some of these involve travelling to different time
periods, and it's another way Kitase has successfully addressed a
negative aspect of FF XIII -- the lack of interaction with
townsfolk and disregard of free exploration of the game world. The
quests tend not to be that interesting though, and few reward you
with anything particularly worthwhile.

Another great area is a sort-of casino theme park, not
dissimilar to FF VII's Golden Saucer. You'll get to gamble
for prizes, exchange objects you've found around the game for
better objects, and even race chocobos. There's no story to be had
in this place, so it's just there for fun, and it's great to be
able to return here from time to time for a bit of a legs-up with a
slot machine or a huge racing bird. You know, as you do.

Character development
A strong point of FF XIII was its fairly wide range of
characters, each with reasonably interesting and well-considered
backstories. Like a more traditional Final Fantasy game
you might explore XIII's world with four different
characters at any one time, giving the game's admittedly huge use
of cinematic cut scenes at least a variety of voices, opinions and
social conflicts. In FF XIII-2, however, you play as Serah
and Noel and only Serah and Noel. No other character will join your
main party, cutscenes (while fewer and farther between than in the
last game) feature Serah and Noel, and Serah and Noel are the only
human characters you'll get to fight as. But more on that
later.

The lack of character variation again compresses the game down
to feeling very small. It wouldn't be quite as bad if the two lead
characters were interesting, but they're not especially so.
Personally I found Noel to be one of the dullest characters of any
Final Fantasy game and the story only starts to build out
his backstory to any decent level near the end of the game.

There's one notably compelling and dark flashback scene towards
the last section of the game that smacks strongly of a moment from
Final Fantasy VII, where we see Cloud and Sephiroth's
history as soldiers working together played out. It's just a shame
in FF XIII-2 this happens so late in the story I had
already decided Noel was paper-thin and couldn't care less what
happened to him. A shame, as it's as if the game's telling you,
"See, these characters are good, sorry we just didn't tell
you that 25 hours earlier." A real shame, perhaps. Serah's a jolly
one though, she can stay in future.

The game's primary antagonist is Caius Ballad -- a
time-travelling cretin hell-bent on destroying the world for the
benefit of a certain character you'll meet in the game. Like many
personalities in FF XIII-2, he's not someone you'll
immediately feel anything towards. His ultimate malice is kept too
subtle in the story for too long, and even once his true colours
and intentions are revealed he still lacks the deep intrigue of
past Final Fantasy ultra-bastards, such as FF VII's
Sephiroth or FF X's Seymour. Only towards the end of the
game does he become interesting, and by that point it's too late to
care.

Characters from FF XIII make brief appearances, but as
mere cameos more than anything. I spent the first half of the game
thinking, "Perhaps this will be the moment I get more than two
people in my party? Ah, no. Right, back to just the two of us
then." Final Fantasy has traditionally been story and characters
first, everything else second. With this game it's absolutely the
other way around.

Final Fantasy fans will be pleased to know a Moogle
(sort of a cross between a floating bear and an unromantic Cupid)
follows behind you for the whole game. Called Mog, he serves three
purposes: helping you discover items hidden around the world,
delivering quaint doses of comic relief with light-hearted dialogue
and classic overuse of the word "Kupo!" and giving information to
the main characters of the game.

But seriously, this creature knows everything. As soon as a
question is raised in the game about what, who, why or how
something is happening, if Serah or Noel don't know, Mog will. "How
the sodding hell did he know that?!" I caught the voice in the back
of my head saying on more than one occasion. In my notes for this
review I actually described Mog as a "loveable know-it-all that
sounds like a cross between a needy American child actor and Alvin
from the Chipmunks". It's a good thing though; Mog's a great little
chap to have around and helps break up the Serah- and Noel-heavy
cutscenes.

Another great character that came out of nowhere is Chocolina --
a quirky travelling merchant (think O'aka from Final Fantasy
X) who conveniently seems to be able to travel through time in
order to follow you. Dressed from head to foot as a giant red bird,
Chocolina appears to be convinced she's a chocobo. I'm only
disappointed she hasn't appeared in a game before now. I'd
personally welcome a spin-off game centred purely on her, actually.
Or at least a TV series.

Sadly, the greatness of Mog and Chocolina's comic relief doesn't
make up for the discrepancies caused by an overall paper-thin story
and character interactions that border on the baffling at times.
It's incredible how much the primary characters appear to correctly
guess about their predicaments. Serah could probably qualify for a
PhD in theoretical physics given her incredible knowledge of
spacetime fluctuations, paradoxes and rifts in the fabric of
causality. The same goes for futureboy Noel. Any gaps in their
knowledge is filled in by Mog, scrapping the need to explore for
answers. As a result of this, dialogue about what could boil down
to real-life quantum physics can be so overly simplistic at times
it astonishes. If only it had been a part of the game to find a
mysterious library of aging historians to discover the answers that
Noel and Serah seem to pluck correctly out of thin air, we could've
seen this story deepen another level. Voice acting is good though,
so at the very least their melodrama comes across as authentic.

Final Fantasy XIII-2Square Enix

Battle systemFinal Fantasy XIII featured a new battle system called
Paradigm Shift that allowed players to assign specific roles to
characters, such Commando for physical attacks, Medic for healing
and so forth. Characters could master multiple roles and each
"Paradigm" was a pre-set arrangement of roles. It was an effective
way of balancing speedy real-time battles with a variety of
possible ways to win them. "[That] was quite popular so we took it
as a base and topped it up," Kitase explained to me when I asked
why that system was repeated for FF XIII-2. The "topping
up" refers to the ability to capture over 150 possible monsters in
the game and have them fight alongside you.

Unlike older Final Fantasy games, there are no "Aeons"
or "GF" creatures to summon in battle for single powerful attacks,
but when questioned, Kitase said the ability to bring monsters into
battle with you was "a replacement to that". Each recruitable
monster has a different set of skills, and can each be developed
and levelled up. "[It] contributes towards a higher degree of
strategy needed" to win battles, Kitase explained, and he's not
wrong. Fights in the game are fast and fun, although the higher
level your characters are the less you'll need to strategise for
most battles. An auto-battle function strips away any real need to
do much more than let the computer decide the best attack for a
given fight, and the skill required on the player's part is much
more focussed on building and selecting the right Paradigm for each
battle.

Levelling up
The "Crystarium" makes a return for Final Fantasy XIII-2,
and as it did in the previous game it resembles the Sphere Grid
from FF X strongly. Although visually a bit confusing at
first, it makes character skill development quite easy, if a bit
simplistic. You'll earn CP points by fighting battles and spend
them on activating a sphere in the Crystarium; spheres all advance
heath or magical ability, for example, but some also represent
skills like stronger magics or new defence modes.

Captured monsters are levelled up in the same way, and overall
the system offers an accessible and unified way to develop roles
and skills. More advanced gamers can customise the way characters
fight when they're not being controlled by the player, but it's not
often necessary to delve into such micro-management.

Music
Soundtrack work for FF XIII-2 is the joint product of
Masashi Hamauzu, Naoshi Mizuta and Mitsuto Suzuki. Fans will
recognise Hamauzu as composer for Final Fantasies X and
XIII, and his modern, jazzy, highly synth-driven sonic
signature is all over FF XIII-2. Production-wise the music
is great, and there's a decent amount of variety overall, even if
the classic each-town-has-its-own-distinctive-theme ideology has
been abandoned.

It must be said though that this has to be the weirdest, almost
experimental, soundtrack of any FF game to date. For
example, the number of tracks with strong female vocals wailing
lyrics about "tiiime and spaaace" over the top is staggering.
Classic FF composer Nobuo Uematsu would never have picked
a fast, vocal-driven number for a part of a game where you're
exploring a town on a beach (New Bodhum), and it's quite honestly
another reason XIII-2 has a tone far removed from that of
past games. Maybe that was the intention. I can't say the music
made the game worse, but some of the choices made in this area are
truly bizarre.

Graphics and performance
Graphically Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a rich and
highly-polished product. Environments are wonderfully detailed and
small touches, such as being able to control the weather in some
areas, or the subtle animation of characters' eyebrows and frowns,
are symbolic of a great attention to detail on Square Enix's part.
Pre-rendered cutscenes are kept to a minimum, and most of such
sequences are rendered in real-time by the console, helping keep a
consistent graphical feel to the game.

Overall it's difficult to criticise the game on a technical
level, it ticks all the boxes of superb engineering. Final Fantasy
games have always been at the forefront of the battle to push
consoles to the limits of their hardware, and FF XIII-2 is
no exception.

Conclusion
Readers who have absorbed everything up to this point should
hopefully find my conclusion of this game unsurprising: it's a
decent enough fantasy game with a fun central game mechanic, but it
lacks so much depth that fans of the franchise will be hoping for
that I can't help feeling it's another one that'll disappoint
hardcore Final Fantasy lovers. Its lack of depth will make
it an enjoyable play for many people, but a frustratingly shallow
RPG for others.

You'll get about 25-40 hours of gameplay (I got 33 hours over
the last week or so) depending on how much of a completionist you
are, and there's certainly a lot of optional hidden stuff, such as
locations, people and time periods, to warrant the time and
attention required by those willing to see all the things the game
has to offer.

But overall, while I'm not filing it as a bad game (it certainly
has fun, touching moments throughout), I'm sadly coming around to
the realisation that we just have to accept Final
Fantasy today is aimed at a very different audience to
what it once was. And that audience doesn't seem to include the
long-time lovers like me.

Comments

I played the demo and this game was really amazing....... I tried to make it to the midnight premiere but the closest one was at least 50 miles away =(

Tomtay

Jan 31st 2012

even though this isnt a traditional final fantasy game, people have got to stop looking at this as though we are still playing in the times of final fantasy 7 or 8 or 10 (skip 9). those were seris defniing games and these are things that can be see as a historic games that made all rpg's what they are today but even in final fantasy 7 or 8 the information for the story was based on the time in which you visited certain places. there are things you can do along the way and things you dont realy have to do.what makes final fantasy XIII-2 not look as appealing to anyone who played those old time games was that it wasnt on looks it was on gameplay and story. too much nowadays is put into the look of a game and we lose art of the connection with the story. after a while you say ahh its beautiful but once you have sen it once there is no real want to go back and do it again. with final fantasy XII i have battled sephiorth nearly 1000 times since i played it when i was little. i have never lost the love for those epic game moments. with the newer final fantasies